Pathfinder Fun Night

I spent the night at the church last night, as it was our annual Pathfinder Fun Night. In our club, we motivate behavior by awarding merit points. But merit points have no value unless they can be redeemed in some way, shape, or form. For us, that is Fun Night at the December/January crossover, or Fun Day which will happen in early June. Any child who has earned 75% of the “mandatory” merit points (and any other requirements I have added) is awarded the privilege of attending Fun Night.

This year, all of the kids in our club hit the 75% mark. I wish they had all come for the fun, but that is not always within my control.

We usually have Fun Night on New Year’s Eve in the form of a party/sleep-over at the church. The kids love doing this (we let them stay up past midnight!) and it costs very little money. We had intended to have Fun Night on New Year’s Eve this year too, but the church wanted to have a social then, so we moved Fun Night one week into 2012, i.e., last night.

The thing we did not notice was that we also had a regular meeting scheduled for Sunday morning, and we did not move that. So when we woke up this morning, got dressed, and had breakfast, it was meeting time. No one was late though.

On Fun Night we set up one of the projectors and connect it to a video game system. The kids take turns playing games on an 8′ screen (that is… on the wall). We had pizza for supper, and ice cream for dessert.

I bought a 36-pack of novelty ice creams when I picked up the pizza, and since there were only 12 of us there, I made the command decision to let everyone have 3. What is more fun than ice cream? This was a reward after all.

Now check out the difference between the picture on the box and the actual item that came out of that same box.

Truth in Advertising

Do you see any difference? Yeah – neither did I. 😉

To prevent video game overload, we also earned the Tie-Dye honor. Two of the girls in the club teamed up to teach it. They both earned the honor themselves when we went to Rhode Island last spring, reviewed the material again last week, bought the supplies, and instructed the other kids. They did a great job too. In Pathfinders, when a person teaches an honor, they get a silver diamond to attach to their honor patch, so I will make sure these young ladies each get their diamond. Here are the shirts after they were dyed and wrapped in plastic wrap.

Tie-dye shirts "baking"

I got them all to bed by 12:30, which was my goal. I got them up again at 7:15, though my goal there was 7:00. I overslept (but with no alarm set, that’s easy to understand).

Va came out to cook us some breakfast. She does many, many things very well, and one of those things is cook breakfast. She made some pancakes from scratch, as she does every Sunday morning at our house. It is my favorite meal of the week, honestly.

Breakfast made with love!

This is not an example of good photography, but the indoor shots I take are rarely very good. I chalk that up to my inability to effectively use flash. Maybe someday I will be adequate at flash photography, but that day still lies in the future!

After breakfast the kids rolled up their sleeping bags and packed up their things. Then we had our regular meeting. I was good and tired when the meeting ended at noon.

I was thinking how good it is of you to use your free time to help out the kids. We seem to have so little free time these days, but I have to wonder if we really do have less than our parents? I’m not so sure, but you put yours to good use in any case.

I moved here from the suburbs of Washington DC seven years ago. Back then I would spend 2.5 hours per day in my car commuting to work through heavy traffic. Up here, my round-trip commute is an hour a day, so have an extra 90 minutes per day to get things done. I am so happy to be able to use it for these kids. It SURE beats driving through traffic!

They are the ones who drive me to learn wild flowers (and thus, photography), edible wild plants, and even knitting. I am much richer because of them.

After we moved up here, but before we moved into our house, I was about 15 minutes from the office. That wasn’t enough time for me to decompress between work and home. I like a thirty minute commute. It’s about right for me.